Doug Beahm leads his llamas Sunday on a latrine-cleaning mission at Rocky Mountain National Park. “People say: ‘What a terrible job,'” hesaid. ” I walk through God’s splendor for two hours. And yeah, there’s about 10 or 15 minutes of discomfort, but there’s bad parts to every job.”

It’s another crappy day in paradise, which is why Doug Beahm and his three-llama pack string are huffing up to Chasm Lake on a critical mission: waste removal.

Beahm and his four-footed companions are in charge of hauling the droppings left at the latrines by hundreds of hikers in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Wastes have been hauled from the park for decades – but now they are becoming a bigger concern as backcountry ethics evolve.

“Everybody’s going to use the bathroom up there – at least we hope,” said Sue Richert, a park employee who held the waste-hauling job for eight years. “We have to manage that.”

But for the first time this summer, rock climbers in one part of the park are being asked to haul out their waste in chemically lined bags – a move considered the future of backpacking and camping.

“We’re trying to change human behaviors – not just in climbing sites but in all of the backcountry,” said Jim Dougan, the park’s wilderness program specialist.

For decades, the recommended method has been to bury waste in shallow “cat holes” and either burn or carry out used toilet paper.

After tens of millions of visitors to popular sites such as the national parks, many are beginning to question whether the landscape can tolerate more human waste, which can contaminate water and cause illness.

In addition, it doesn’t break down readily in environments like the alpine tundra.

Dougan suggests that a public-education campaign – similar to those that raised the collective consciousness of littering in the 1970s – will be required.

“We need to get people to think about these trail corridors the way they think about their rivers,” Dougan said. “Almost everyone on a river trip knows you have to pack your waste out.”

To that end, the park and the Golden-based American Alpine Club have established a kiosk on a climbers’ trail near Lumpy Ridge, where hikers can pick up the “Restop 2” sanitary bags.

“It’s become more a problem as more people go into the backcountry and as the solutions that may have been reasonable 20 years ago may be less reasonable now,” said Phil Powers, executive director of the mountaineering organization.

Powers said the bags seal tightly and contain odor so well that it’s no big deal to carry them, fully loaded, inside a backpack, and that they’re actually much easier to “target” than a cat hole.

The chemicals neutralize the waste to the point that they can be thrown in the trash and taken to landfills.

The bags cost the Park Service $1.50 each, but officials are distributing them for free to climbers because of the cost and the need to develop greater public acceptance, Dougan said.

In part, the llamas also build that public understanding.

Heffer, Lloyd and Borman, the woolly pack animals, never fail to attract attention when they march nose-to-tail through the tundra.

Beahm makes weekly trips to the park’s four backcountry latrines, packing up to 100 pounds on each animal.

The park has tried other methods of waste removal, but helicopters proved too costly and intrusive, and horses tend to wear deep troughs in the trails, unlike the soft-footed llamas.

“At one point, we tried taking up a propane tank and torch and tried burning it. But by the time you bring the tanks up there, you might as well just haul it out,” Richert said.

Beahm, a gregarious former rodeo cowboy, delightedly engages the hikers he encounters, chatting them up and posing for photos with the llamas until the tourists get around to asking: What are they carrying?

“People say: ‘What a terrible job,”‘ Beahm said. “I go yeah, it’s terrible. I walk through God’s splendor for two hours. And yeah, there’s about 10 or 15 minutes of discomfort, but there’s bad parts to every job.”

Today, one out of every three men imprisoned in Colorado -- and four out of every five women inmates -- say they have some type of moderate to critical mental health need, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections. The number of inmates with mental health needs in Colorado's prisons has steadily risen in the past two decades.

Maybe you've got plans to camp this weekend (just watch out for the mud and, er, snow up there), go for a hike or maybe you just want to lounge by the pool and kick it. Unfortunately, Mother Nature doesn't always necessarily cooperate.